West rakes in cash

Add Florida Republican Allen West to the list of bomb-throwing political personalities raising cash off their knack for connecting with the country's most exercised activists.

West, a former Army colonel challenging Democratic Rep. Ron Klein, raised $1.4 million in the second quarter of 2010 – an astonishing number that puts him in the same league as Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, the inflammatory conservative who raked in $1.7 million over the same period, and Florida Rep. Alan Grayson, the caustic liberal cable news fixture who vacuumed up $800,000 in the first three months of 2010.

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Republican officials expect West's haul to be the largest of any non-incumbent GOP candidate for the last three months. It brings his overall fundraising for the cycle to $3.5 million and he ended June with $2.2 million on hand.

While West lacks the official platform that Bachmann and Grayson have used to raise money at record rates, he has emerged as something of a conservative hero this cycle. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed him and a YouTube video of a West speech to a tea party event last October has been viewed more than two million times.

It's not clear, though, whether West's money will be enough to propel him into close contention with Klein in a district that leans Democratic – especially given that the incumbent is no slouch when it comes to fundraising. Klein hasn't released his second-quarter numbers yet, but he had $2.6 million in the bank at the end of March. In the 2008 cycle, when West challenged Klein the first time, the incumbent outspent him by about $1.8 million and defeated him by a 10-point margin.

"He just killed us on TV," West recalled in an interview with POLITICO. "The most important thing is to match them in the ads that they will be running."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported Rep. Ron Klein’s (D-Fla.) cash-on-hand total at the end of March. Klein had $2.6 million, not $1.1 million.